


Under a harvest moon

by Charlie9646



Series: The Most Powerful Of Magic [1]
Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Anal Sex, Bisexual Bill Weasley, Bottom Severus Snape, Drinking, F/M, Former Teacher/Student, Gay, Gay Severus Snape, Homophobia, Kissing, LGBT Themes, Loss, M/M, No underage, Sex, Slash, Slight Internalized Homophobia, Still sort of in the closet, Top Bill Weasley, talking about death, talking about loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 07:24:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20524187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlie9646/pseuds/Charlie9646
Summary: There are four things that are true about both Severus and BillBoth have visible scars from the warBoth lost the woman they loved on HalloweenBoth hide from life in their jobsBoth are gay and don’t want to admit itArthur believes that setting the two up to meet again, they can work a few of these things out. He chooses Halloween because maybe just maybe it will help them be honest with each other. Things don’t go exactly how he planned.When a door opens for you, why would you let it to shut? Even if it’s not exactly at the right time?





	Under a harvest moon

  1. Bill Weasley wanted to be doing anything else tonight. He wanted to be anywhere else. No that was a lie. He wanted to at his wife’s grave. He wanted to mourn Fleur, just as he done for three months straight after they had buried her. His father, Arthur refused to allow him to do that. 

Their conversation went as such “I do not want to go and meet with this person you insist I visit with”. 

“Son you can’t live your life sitting in front of a headstone. Fleur wouldn’t want that for you. She want you to live. To find someone else, to be something else than just her dead husband.”

“Fine I will go meet with this person, but why does it have to be Halloween?”

”Because it is the only time either of you stubborn people will be honest about your feelings”.

His father said nothing more, but if all else failed he would drag his adult son from the gravesite to this meeting if he had to. He would not inform Bill of who this person he was even meeting was. He wondered was the other man also kept in the dark about who he was meeting? He hoped so, maybe he would at least have someone to complain about his father’s actions to if that were the case. Bill loved his father, but while he loved the man’s goofy nature, love of all things muggle, and habit of making people laugh?

The man also could be as stubborn as mule when he wanted to be. But who else besides a stubborn man would be with someone as temperamental as Molly Weasley? No one as unless their personality was as strong as hers. And Arthur’s was.

The next person who walked into the wizarding inn, on the coast of Scotland, shocked Bill greatly. He hasn’t seen the man since the end of the war. Well the trials that followed the end of the war that is. Severus Snape like he had all of Bill’s schooling and all the years after, was dressed in black head to toe. Now however he was dressed in muggle clothing. A soft looking button up shirt, slacks that seemed to make his long legs look even longer if that was possible, dragon hide boots, and his long, longer than it had ever been black hair, possibly even mid back length was tied back in a black leather strap. It also didn’t really look all that greasy. It looked like a thin layer of black silk.

Dressed in simple muggle clothes the man looked younger, closer to his age of not yet even forty. What was the man now thirty nine? He had been twenty one when Bill had started school. Bill realized he was older now than Severus had been when he first became his teacher, he twenty eight turning twenty nine next month.

School children didn’t want to realize that their teachers were human, but the truth was Severus Snape had taught students who went to school with him when he first started teaching. They were basically ten years apart. Bill had siblings with a larger age gap than that with him. Two to be exact. 

Severus Seemed to scan the room looking for no one and anyone at the same time. His sharp knowing eyes landed on Bill, who was sitting at a small wooden booth in the back corner of the room. The man’s boots hit the scratched wooden floor as he walked towards where Bill sat. 

“Hello” said the potion’s professor or rather former potion’s professor. “Your father it seemed said myself and a person from my past could benefit from talking, you are the only person here I know, so pardon my assumption, but I am guessing he meant you?”

”Your guess is as good as mine.” Said Bill. “He gave me less information than he gave you saying I was to meet someone here who would understand what I was going through when it came to the loss of my wife.” 

“Arthur, ever the man of few words, unless it involves children, muggle things or telling others how to live their lives” drawled Severus. 

“Your not wrong on any of those fronts” said Bill. “Though he also enjoys talking about travel, or charms”.

”Don’t remind of his idea of wonderful charms. Potter and your brother flying that wretched car into a tree was something I had to help clean up.” Said Severus. 

“At least you never had to deal with him trying to make something called Television work with magic. It didn’t go all that well” said Bill with a laugh. His father’s love of muggle things had made for a interesting childhood, more so when he tried to use magic on them. But the man was always a loving, protective, kind, hard working father. And he wasn’t going to let Snape get away with saying any different if he tried. 

“True”, barked Severus laughing, but it was a joyful laugh something that Bill had never heard from him. He also couldn’t help, but stare at the man’s scarred neck. They were healed slightly open, raised and still rather bright pink/red. Not unlike his own scars. He and Severus both bore many scars from the war. 

Severus spoke again more calmly this time “I am sorry about Fleur, your wife I cannot imagine what it was like...”

Bill narrowed his blue eyes at him, “of course you can’t imagine, because you really haven’t lost anyone you love”.

Severus snarled back “you don’t know a damn thing about me Weasley! You don’t know who I have lost or who I loved.”

Bill said hotly “I forgot you loved a woman who was married to someone else, you loved Lily Potter and she died on Halloween as well.”

Severus said frustrated “yes I did love Lily, she was my best friend, my first friend. But I was more talking about Regulus Black, who I was in a relationship with when he died.”

Bill asked “so you are gay?”

Severus asked “is that a problem?” He drawled sounding like the teacher he once was. Knowing that is was frowned on in the wizarding world, and even Dumbledore had not escaped the scrutiny of being talked about because of his various though names generally unmentioned, relationships.

Bill shook his head, and said “no it doesn’t bother me. I have been with men before, before I met my wife.”

Severus’s eyebrows raised, shocked that Bill had responded with that. Their waitress came over and took their drink orders. Both wanted fire whiskey. Neither wanted food. The blonde waitress nodded and tried desperately to flirt with Bill. 

He stared into her green eyes and said “not interested Sweetheart , just want our drinks, that’s it”.

Severus asked “why aren’t you interested? She’s rather pretty, isn’t she?”

Bill cocked his head to the left “aren’t you gay? If not you should ask her out.”

Severus respond “I am, and beyond that I don’t like being someone’s second choice. But good deflecting my question.”

Bill laughed, deflecting? Severus Snape was the “Prince” of deflecting. He was a man you could know for two decades, and know next to nothing about. That was likely why Bill was one of the few people alive that knew the man was gay. Hell Harry had his memories and the man did not likely even know, and he also did not know that the man was with Regulus. 

Severus Snape was a spy, and a good one at that, he was good at shaping the narrative exactly how he wanted to. He made Harry believe he was in love with Lily, and through the man he made the world believe that. Which help his cover if anyone did find out he was gay. All he could say was remember I loved Lily Evans. The wizarding world was not kind to those they believed to be inferior, the only thing worse than a muggleborn or blood traitor? A gay man. Like Victorian England they forgot women had a sex drive and could be gay as well. 

The worst was for the man who was on the receiving end, because he was “making himself in a woman”.

“Well Severus while I loved my wife, and still do, I have always preferred men. Fleur looked like she was a “pretty face”, she was a stubborn, smart, feisty, tough, hard headed, woman who would put me in place. She was a amazing curse breaker in her own right. She was a woman, but she wasn’t like most. I before her had only ever been with men,” said Bill.

“Are you sure that you are not just gay and was attracted to her, or attracted at the idea of being with a woman you cared for great deal about? I felt that at one about Lily. I was not actually sexually attracted to her. I loved her dearly would of even married her, if she would of had me. In some ways I am grateful she didn’t want me,” said Severus staring into ocean blue eyes as he reached out to touch the man’s hand.

Bill allowed the touch. Feeling Severus’s long soft fingers against his own. Their hands were so different. Severus’s were long narrow as pale as snow. His nails trimmed neatly, the tips of his fingers potion stained. Though not a speck of dirt in his nails. They were smooth and soft. This was surely not a man who did hard labor, this was a man skilled at a craft where your mind had more value than brute force.

Bill’s hands were rough, callused, his fingers thick, his palms large. His skin was covered in freckles. Dirt under his nails from the work he had done in his yard this morning, his skin smelled like salt from living at shell cottage. His nails were ever so slightly bitten a bad habit he had never totally given up from his youth. Though a bad habit he rarely partakes in anymore.

Bill pulled his hand away from Severus, tucking them under the small table. “Severus you are wrong I loved Fleur because she was Fleur, I am bisexual, not gay. I don’t find our waitress attractive because to me I think I would find her mind dull, and that’s the most important thing to me in a partner. Beauty fades the mind takes a lot longer to do so, and surely when my partner’s mind fades, mine will as well.”

Severus nodded and licked his lips “I fully understand that, so the mind matters to you more than anything else”.

Bill nodded.

Severus said “good I like to hear that, because I value the same thing in my own partner.” He stared into Bill’s eyes. They smiled at each other. The dark haired man licked his lips. The redhead groaned. Clearly they were attracted to each other. The jabs, questions and the flirting hinted to that.

Their waitress came over with their whiskey and she sighed as she set it down. Under her breath as she walked away she said “all the good ones are either taken, gay or snobs.”

They both took sips of their drinks. Bill decided fuck it and reached out again for Severus’s hand. He had to take a chance. He found Severus attractive Fleur would want him to move on. They didn’t have to get married, they didn’t have to date, but spending a night with Severus wasn’t going to do any harm to either of them. They both would likely enjoy it. They both were lonely men. They both were of legal age. They had even gotten the same amount of OWLS and NEWTS surely they both had the same amount of intelligence that they both seemed to crave in their relationships. 

He wondered to himself whether Snape preferred to top or bottom. He expected the man was the type to top. Bill would tolerate it. He preferred to top. He liked to make his partner scream. 

They finished their drinks in silence. They paid their bill. Bill asked him “want to go outside and smoke a cigarette with me?”

Severus nodded. They both retrieved their cold weather clothing. Severus a heavy heather gray cloak. Bill a black leather jacket with a fur lined collar. 

Bill once they were outside, feeling the fall leaves crunch under their feet. Looking out at the shoreline. The wind caught Severus’s hair in it, causing his long bangs to come out of the leather tie, which held his hair back. They fell into his eyes. Bill reached over with his freckled hand to push Severus’s hair out of his face. The man’s black eyes shut, as he sighed. Leaning into to Bill’s hand. Their skin was so different. Severus’s was like alabaster, Bill’s had a light tan. The redhead reached over they were basically the same height and kissed Sev. Who seemed shocked. But then he opened his mouth allowing the other man in. Both men twisted their hands in each other’s hair. Moaning and whimpering at the feeling. When they pulled away for breathe, Bill leaned his head into Severus’s shoulder.

Then he turned his head ever so slightly to whisper in the former potion’s professor shell of a ear, “I want nothing more than you under me, I want nothing more than to listen to you plead for more. I want nothing more than to watch give into the pleasure, I want to watch you come undone because of me Severus Snape. I don’t want the waitress because I was sitting in front of the man I want to spend the night with. And that Sev is you”.

Severus let out a loud groan, and spoke “I want that too.” 

Bill said “then let’s just forget the cigarettes and go to bed. Your place or mine?”

Severus sighed “mine”.

They sidelong aparated together to Severus’s house, straight into his living room. As soon as he wasn’t dizzy Bill threw off his own leather jacket and ripped Severus’s cloak off. Then he went to work on the man’s shirt as he kissed him. When they came up for air, Severus said “follow me to the bedroom”. He grabbed Bill’s hand and led him upstairs. 

They slowly walked up the stairs. Bill noticed that the house was rather old, the wood of the stairs bleached and worn. The carpet had clearly seen it’s better days. The paint on the walls peeling. He said nothing, he had heard from Harry once upon a time that Severus lived in the house where he grew up. The halfblood’s parents clearly were just as poor as the Weasley’s if not more so.

Bill understood why this would make someone ambitious. All of his own childhood he had promised himself that he would not be poor like his parents. That he would have a better job than his father. A nicer house. That he would raise his children with same amount of love as his parent’s had, but also wanting his children to have a few more material things than he had growing up.

With how Severus seemed to keep people at a distance, lashing out at others at times, the way he sometimes seem to dodge invisible blows that would never come? Severus had neither money, nor love growing up. And Bill hoped one day the man would find it. If not with him, with someone else.

They passed two shut doors, and then entered what was the master bedroom. Unlike the old, rickety, peeling paint of the rest of the house? The bed was beautiful. It looked like nothing that Bill had seen in the house before it. The headboard and footboard, were a dark cherry wood, the mattress was firm but soft. The blankets were a navy blue, not the green he would of expected. The sheets were white. The pillows were soft. Bill sat on the bed and took of his shoes. Severus started to unbutton his shirt as Bill yanked his off quickly. 

When they both were down to their boxers Bill kissed the other man softly and untied his long hair. He ran his fingers through the black as night hair it felt like silk. It was straight as a board. Without the stress of spying, teaching or being bullied by fellow students? Severus decided to take care of himself. Though he had given up on cutting his hair. 

Bill licked his lips. Blue eyes taking in the man before him. Severus’s skin was as pale as snow. His nipples a pale pink. He only had hair on his head, some under his arms, a tiny bit on his lower legs, and his happy trail. His collar bones were visible, his hip bone stuck out with a sharp angle, his ribs were rather visible when he sighed. His body had tons of small silvery scars all over his body. His Dark Mark was a faded gray, the snake bite scars marred his long pale neck. 

“I know I am nothing to look at, so stop staring and get on with it.” Severus hissed, hiding his face with his long hair. It wrapped around his shoulders like a blanket, nearly. It did not make him look like a woman, it did not make him look like a feminine man, it just made his look like Severus Snape.

Bill looked up into Severus’s black eyes “you clearly don’t see yourself clearly. We both have our scars. Nothing is wrong with a few scars it’s shows the world you have lived. People in prefect bodies when they reach the end of this life, will not be able to tell the stories either of us can.”

Severus sighed loudly “says the handsome man, whose scars don’t mark him as a villain”.

Bill laughs soundly “a werewolf used my face as a scratching post, I assure you I am marked in a way that makes people uncomfortable”. He kissed the other man before he could respond with something else self hating. He stood up and pushed the other man down on the bed. 

They undressed fully and desperately tried to to forget about lost loves, the past and the scars that marred their bodies.

They fell asleep next to each other in a pile of long limbs. When Bill woke up the next morning to the other side of the bed cold. A note written in the script that marked his potion’s essays all those years ago said, “if you would like to spend another night together send me a owl, I had orders that had to finished by tomorrow, and I may have taken a cigarette or two since we never got to that last night. SS”

Bill dressed quickly, and found his leather jacket on a old pale wooden rocking chair in the room. He walked down the rickety stairs and out the front door. He would be owling Snape, it wasn’t love, by far but it felt nice to be close to another after a lonely year. The man was intelligent, snarky, funny and wonderful in bed once he let go. 

He lit a cigarette outside on the front steps and sighed. If you would of told him two years ago that he was going to sleep with his former potion’s professor he would of laughed. Or more likely punched you, but in that world he had just married Fleur the most beautiful women he had ever met. Stranger things had happened. Severus Snape was nothing like Fleur, the exact opposite of her, and that’s might be exactly why Bill Weasley felt so wonderful in his bed.

He aparated home to Shell cottage, when he finished his cigarette, the only thing to greet him were memories and ghosts of what could of been or so he thought. But his father was waiting for him, sitting at the small kitchen table. 

“How did it go son?” Asked Arthur. 

He responded with a quiet “well”.

“Severus and you had a good talk? And then you went home with someone else? I am so happy that your trying to put yourself. Your mother is rather hoping you will find a nice woman and one day settle down”.

Bill said nothing for a second. His father clearly didn’t know he was bi, and that Severus Snape was gay, but maybe it was best to keep it that way. He started to make himself a cup of tea, and said “you could say something like that. I spent the night with someone who understands what it’s like to loose someone.”

His father said “well that’s good, maybe with your friendship Severus may see a reason to move own himself, it’s a sad thing he’s still attached to someone who been dead for nearly twenty years”.

Bill laughed to himself “ I will try that day, but I think Lily Evans is not the real reason the man struggles to let someone in”.

“What do you mean son?”

”Dad you wouldn’t understand and leave it at that”.

Arthur said “enough about Snape, now tell me about this girl you met”.

”Dad I would rather not if that’s alright I have some work that needs to get done, and these are the same clothes I wore last night.”

Arthur nodded, raising his red eyebrows and his blue eyes widened as he took the sight of his oldest son in, “well see you on Sunday for dinner William, and when your ready I would like to hear about this person whose given you your spark back”.

Bill sat down at the table, a potion falling out of his pocket. The note wrapped around it said “take this when your at your darkest it helps, SS”

Arthur reached for it and read the note, realizing in that second who his son spent the night with. He said nothing, handing it to Bill, and fled from the house. At a later date he would tell his son it was fine that he was with another man. Neither of his parents cared. They just wanted him to be happy.

Even if it was with of all people Severus Snape, but as much as anyone Severus deserved happiness as well. Even if it was with Arthur’s son. 

At least the man had a type it seemed redheads. 

Truth was Severus had a type and it had nothing to do with Bill’s hair, and everything to do with his dragon hide boots and leather jacket. 


End file.
